Department of Geosciences, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721, USA.
School for Environment and Sustainability, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA.
Science. 2018 Aug 31;361(6405):920-923. doi: 10.1126/science.aan5360.
Impacts of global climate change on terrestrial ecosystems are imperfectly constrained by ecosystem models and direct observations. Pervasive ecosystem transformations occurred in response to warming and associated climatic changes during the last glacial-to-interglacial transition, which was comparable in magnitude to warming projected for the next century under high-emission scenarios. We reviewed 594 published paleoecological records to examine compositional and structural changes in terrestrial vegetation since the last glacial period and to project the magnitudes of ecosystem transformations under alternative future emission scenarios. Our results indicate that terrestrial ecosystems are highly sensitive to temperature change and suggest that, without major reductions in greenhouse gas emissions to the atmosphere, terrestrial ecosystems worldwide are at risk of major transformation, with accompanying disruption of ecosystem services and impacts on biodiversity.
全球气候变化对陆地生态系统的影响受到生态系统模型和直接观测的限制。在上一个冰期到间冰期的过渡期间，由于变暖以及相关的气候变化，普遍发生了生态系统的转变，其幅度与在高排放情景下预计下个世纪的变暖相当。我们回顾了 594 份已发表的古生态学记录，以研究自末次冰期以来陆地植被的组成和结构变化，并根据替代未来排放情景预测生态系统转变的幅度。我们的研究结果表明，陆地生态系统对温度变化非常敏感，并表明，如果不大大减少向大气排放温室气体，全球陆地生态系统面临着重大转变的风险，随之而来的是生态系统服务的中断和对生物多样性的影响。
